


Sleep to Dream

by fabricdragon



Series: Smooth Criminal [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexual Sherlock, Autism Spectrum, Gen, Kidnapping, Non-Consensual, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Relationship(s), Psychological Torture, Sensory Deprivation, but not sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-09 17:50:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8905684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabricdragon/pseuds/fabricdragon
Summary: Three chapters depicting what happened between Sherlock and Moriarty, and some thoughts between Sherlock and MycroftTW for sensory processing issues, non con  (but not sex), and what is essentially torture for  one person but would be a spa day for someone else. this is not pretty if you have sensory issues, touch issues, or are really empatheticTakes place in the final chapters of  Smooth Criminal and is detailing what happened between Jim Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes.





	1. Thin Ice

Sherlock woke up slowly, his brain coming back online one piece at a time.

Moriarty had been playing his games with a computer expert and an MI6 agent.  _James Bond: hard to read; trained by M; both of them killers._

Moriarty had given Q back, to help them against Silva.

His brother, Mycroft, was acting extremely tense; as usual, he could scarcely understand why.

MI6 was fascinating. He wanted to spend hours poking around there.

John was being a doctor to Q; Moriarty had suggested that. This put John uncomfortably in position to be a hostage.

“Hostage Time,” Moriarty had said, as sniper targeting pinned him in place, but he didn’t want John‑he wanted me. Why? _Against Mycroft, obviously._

John going down with a dart.  It wasn’t poison; Moriarty wanted him to tell people.

“Well, you know, he would have‑ done something stupid. Instead he’ll just take a little nap, then he can go tell everyone you’ve been taken. C’mon then.” And Moriarty had come into sight.

He was wearing an ill-fitting suit, for him, and his hair had recently been under a wig. He had adhesive residue under his hairline.  Martin. Shaggy red hair-wig- and a bandage over half his face and one eye.  Sherlock had to admit it had disguised his features admirably.

“You were Martin? The whole time?” Sherlock had asked as they got into a van. The van was a linen service van that catered to a number of better hotels and restaurants.

“Yes. Someone had to watch over Q, especially with Darren.” Moriarty smiled pleasantly.  He had reached into a bag and came out with a needle and a vial. “Here. Give yourself a shot.”

“I already have an idea where we’re going,” Sherlock said, looking distastefully at the drugs.  They were still sealed, and clearly labeled.

“Yes, but I need to go talk to people, and I’m leaving you with someone.  You annoy people Sherlock, and I don’t want you scuffed. Best that you sleep until I get back.”

Sherlock didn’t want to, but John lying there with the red dot cleanly in his ear was rather fresh in his mind.  He gave himself an injection.

Moriarty had chatted amiably with him for the few minutes until he had fallen unconscious.

 

_Analysis: he couldn’t move. Correction: he could barely move. Conclusion: paralytic drugs._

Sherlock opened his eyes. 

“Do you know, you were supposed to be a simple hostage? A chit against your brother’s chit, making sure he kept his side of the bargain.” Moriarty’s voice was sensual, dark, and dangerous _.  He’d been in a pleasant mood before; now he was deadly. What had changed?_

A hand gently stroked down from his throat to his groin.  He couldn’t move away.  His brain added facts: _I am nude._

“I was only interested in you at first because of your brother, but then… then you were so fascinating.” Jim moved into view, leaning over Sherlock.  Everything about his face, his eyes, and his expression was deadly, angry, possessive.  Sherlock shivered. “But I was going to let you go _.” Clearly, that was a past tense._

“What happened?” He managed to get the question out, slurred and strangled.

“Your dear brother.  Oh, he’s going along with my plan, Sherlock. It was so pleasant, it would solve everything. M and Mycroft and Q working together would make a beautiful story, all about how I was a British counter-espionage agent. I’d been working for Mycroft, basically, the entire time, smoking out traitors…” Moriarty’s voice gentled somewhat, as he explained it. “Everything was to find the traitors, and of course Silva takes the fall as the big bad computer hacker.  It was all so neat, so very, very elegant.  So beautiful.” _It did sound elegant._

Moriarty stroked his hand down Sherlock’s body again. Sherlock swallowed and tried not to throw up.

“Truth is beauty, and beauty truth,” Moriarty said. “It was beautiful.  But your brother had to go and get jealous, didn’t he?”

“What?” _He’s completely lost his mind._

“He could see how much I like Bond.  When he found out Bond had kissed me he got jealous. Mycroft has always been so possessive, so territorial‑“  Moriarty’s hand slowly stopped on Sherlock’s stomach. His eyes focused on Sherlock’s face. “You don’t believe me…” he said sounding utterly confused. “Do you?”

“My‑” He swallowed with effort.  Moriarty sat him up carefully and tilted his head to make breathing and swallowing easier. “Mycroft wouldn’t be jealous, why would he?”  Sherlock managed to say finally.

“For all that he doesn’t want me anymore, Sherlock, he hates to think that anyone else might have me… at least anyone who mattered.” Moriarty sounded darkly amused.

Sherlock’s mind spun crazily, structures in his mind palace shook and fell. _He was implying that Mycroft had…_

“Of course, if I had thought he might get jealous, I would have used it before. He was never jealous of anyone else, but I suppose they weren’t really competition: too much like goldfish,” Moriarty mused.

_Goldfish? His brother said everyone else was like goldfish, how would Moriarty know that? HOW... it didn’t make sense._

“The one time he has to have a potentially useful reaction, the one time, it had to be with someone I want to keep.”

“But…” Sherlock managed to get out.  Moriarty waited patiently. “Mycroft isn’t sexual…”

Moriarty stared at him, wide eyed, then started giggling. He dropped Sherlock back into the bed and eventually ended up curled against Sherlock’s side, laughing until he was gasping for air.

Eventually he rolled Sherlock back until he was facing up again. “Oh… oh, you poor innocent…” He giggled some more. “You know, it took me ages before I realized you were asexual.  I thought you were just like Mycroft: frighteningly controlled… usually.” Moriarty smiled softly down at him. “You really don’t know, do you?”

All Sherlock could do was try to shake his head. Moriarty seemed to get it.

“Mycroft and I… we had a relationship.  It was a long time ago.” Moriarty’s mouth quirked upwards slightly. “Your brother is… astonishing… when he loses that icy demeanor, when you finally reach the devil inside.”

Sherlock felt violently ill. _This couldn’t possibly be true._

“You didn’t know? Really? You assumed he was like you, then.” He nodded, “I can see that: people assume other people are like they are all the time.  It’s not true, though.”

He smiled down at Sherlock like razors.

“Part of why he left me was you, you know.  I hated you so much.” Moriarty shook his head. “It… I thought you knew. Too late to go back now, though; Mycroft has to be warned off.”

He touched Sherlock’s face, gently. “You have been making assumptions, Sherlock.  Putting beliefs in your mind palace instead of facts, and everything you’ve built on those facts must be in question, mustn’t it?”

Sherlock retreated from reality into his mind and began to dig.

 


	2. Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW threats and touch sensitivity

Sherlock pulled piece after piece out of his mental files and looked at them.  No, he had no evidence‑not even verbal assurance‑that Mycroft was asexual.  He simply had no evidence that he wasn’t.

A prior association with Jim Moriarty… fit the available facts.

In which case, Moriarty’s behavior had to be viewed in a different light. Sherlock held up behavior, tension, attitudes, words and snippets of conversation… pieces started falling together differently.

_Fact: something had taken Moriarty from pleasantly amused to dangerously angry._

_Assumption: Moriarty was telling the truth, and there was a prior relationship with his brother ‘some time ago’_

_Test hypothesis: did this explain the facts, given that Moriarty was clearly more than slightly unbalanced. Yes.  Did it explain the facts better than any other solution? Insufficient data._

Sherlock opened his eyes. He could move more easily. Someone brushed across the bottom of his bare foot; he reacted before he could stop, pulling his foot away from the touch. Hands‑multiple people, his vision was still blurry‑ held him down, and he realized they were putting in an IV.  He tried to fight, but was still uncoordinated.

“Hold still, Sherlock,” Moriarty said. “You can’t do anything about it.”

In short order he was paralyzed again.  His breathing was labored; someone put a mask over his face that helped him breathe. He distantly heard someone say he’d had too much. His eyes were open, he couldn’t close them; someone put drops in them and closed his eyes.

Time did strange things. He was moved, he was on something cold and hard. _Bathtub?  Bathtub._

“Sherlock?” Moriarty’s voice in his ear. “I have to make an example of you, I’m afraid. Mycroft can’t toss me away for this long, and then demand the right to dictate who I see.  I won’t let him damage James just because he FINALLY decided to pay attention to us again.  You do understand that, I trust?”

A hand stroked smoothly over his chest. _Oh God, no._ He could barely tolerate being touched with clothes on.

“You are so much prettier than Mycroft, although I admit you are a bit too slender for my tastes. I like a bit of meat on my men.  James was right: you’re not really my type; also, you don’t have enough darkness about you, although I was getting you there, I think.”

Cold, creamy, wet feeling… on his chest, down his stomach, on his groin… a faint smell of chemicals.  Sherlock tried to panic, but everything was sluggish.

“I don’t think Mycroft believed that you could ever be gotten to the point of shooting a man in cold blood.  Oh, to protect someone from immediate death, certainly, but I could tell.” Moriarty was moving the chemicals with a gloved hand. Sherlock could feel a slight burning sensation. His mind finally put the facts together: _depilatory cream._

“I was right. You are his brother after all; I knew you had some darkness in you.  But James has this philosophy, you see, about breaking valuable things.  I think he’s right.  You could be changed, I think, Sherlock. I think you could be brought around… but to do it and not break you? It would take years.”

Sherlock felt himself being rinsed off. _Why was he doing this?_

“But I can’t make you a sexual creature,” Moriarty said sadly. “OUR relationship was destined to be one of the mind only, unlike your more passionate sibling.

“I could destroy you, Sherlock.  I could always have destroyed you.”

_Burned the heart out of me.  You tried. You almost succeeded_ , Sherlock thought, and, like his brother, it seemed that Moriarty could almost hear him.

“Oh, no… that was before I KNEW you. That plan was older, my dear Sherlock, when I just wanted revenge on your brother, and… admittedly... you were a challenge.”  Moriarty opened Sherlock’s eyes, and put a hand on either side of his face. “I’m going to take you to the very edge of shattering, Sherlock, as a lesson to your brother to leave my‑ to leave James alone.” He smiled at Sherlock. “I won’t actually break you, but it will be close enough to make the point, I think.”

He tipped Sherlock’s head back and kissed him. Sherlock shuddered in revulsion.

Moriarty put Sherlock’s head back on an inflated bath pillow, closed his eyes, and stepped away.  “All yours.”

Strong hands started rubbing slippery gritty‑ _ugh_ ‑something into his skin. They started on his legs and feet, slipping goo between his toes, rubbing over every inch of his skin.  He wanted to scream, to struggle, but he lay limply in the tub. It smelled like a woman’s bath product. They didn’t stop. He was rubbed everywhere, on every side. There was nothing sexual about it, but he couldn’t get away from it.  He flailed for something logical to hold onto, but the sensation of slipperiness, and grit, and hands rubbing him took him apart. He felt tears leaking out from under his eyelashes.

After an eternity they washed him off.  His skin felt tender, and soft, and extraordinarily sensitive.  He was moved to a warm soft surface. He tried to move. He managed to open his eyes.

Someone he didn’t know was pouring cream into their hands, someone else was picking up his foot. Moriarty looked down at him suddenly, “Ah? We wouldn’t want the light to bother you, would we?” and put a blindfold over his eyes. Moriarty leaned in next to his ear and whispered, “Do tell Mycroft exactly how unhappy I am with him, won’t you?” and then put earplugs in his ears.

Someone started rubbing his foot, firmly, gently. His skin was already over sensitized.  By cutting off his sight and hearing, he had nothing to distract him from the smells and the touch.

He was given a full body massage: every inch of his already sensitized skin was gently but firmly rubbed until he couldn’t have put up a fight if he’d wanted to.  He was cowering in the corner of his mind by the time they finished.

His head was tilted back.  Someone wetted his hair and massaged his scalp.  His body felt liquid, and he was torn between trying to ride his body’s reaction to the touch, or retreat away from it. It was too much, but they wouldn’t stop.

He must have blacked out for a moment, because what brought him back was the faint snip of scissors making it past the earplugs.  Someone was holding his hands, _no... two people, one on each side_. They were handling his hands, trimming and cleaning his nails, one of them started buffing his nails, and the other was soaking his hand.  He managed to cry then; he could hear the noises he was making.

Someone removed his earplugs, and he could hear people leaving the room. 

Moriarty’s voice, soft as a whisper slid into his mind, like dripping poison. “You’re so very beautiful, Sherlock.  You look like a model of an angel, fallen to earth.  I could keep you, you know. Hide you away somewhere where no one would ever find you: pet you and pamper you, and keep you naked on satin sheets. All long limbs and black hair against smooth sheets.” Sherlock shook uncontrollably. “I’d keep you just like this, you know, my precious Sherlock.”

“Please, don’t… don’t touch me,” he managed to gasp out.

“As long as dear Mycroft doesn’t do anything to my James, I’ll forget you exist, Sherlock.  You tell him that.”

Someone did something with his IV and he fell into blessed unconsciousness.

 

When he woke up his mind tried to delete it all, but he couldn’t.  He was able to hear… violin? That was the sound of his own playing. His skin felt slippery and things were sliding and touching him everywhere.  He moved, trying to get away from it.

He fell when he got off the bed, he banged his shin very hard and he cried in relief at the pain.  Something smooth and cool slid over his buttocks; he jumped forward, hitting his head.  Eventually, after several more bruises, he realized it was the sensation of slippery soft silk against his hyper sensitized skin under a fitted suit.  With no body hair and no callouses to speak off, everything was magnified.

He tried to get up.  He managed to stagger to the door and open it.  Two people were going into the door across the hall; they looked at him.  The woman‘s eyes slid across him in a frankly sexual fashion and he stumbled backward into the room.  The room he was in was number was 221, _of course it was._

He stood in the middle of the room, trying desperately to hold still, to keep the awful fabric from moving across his skin.  There was no sound in the room except the recorded sounds of his own violin playing.  He staggered over and turned it off.

He had to get help.  He went to the phone.  There was a pad of paper with the hotel name on it. In Moriarty’s elegant script was written the exact address and room number.

He called John.


	3. Memory

“Hello?” _John had almost broken an ankle getting to the phone._

“What did you trip over, John?” Sherlock’s asked.  He couldn’t even begin to deduce anything.

 “Coffee table.” John answered. _He probably fell into the chair.  He had likely been pacing about._

“You shouldn’t be pacing like that.”

“I was worried about you, you insufferable git!” John sounded normal, as if… as if everything was alright.

“I-I’m fine.” Sherlock said as casually as he could manage, given that his legs were shaking from the strain of standing up.

“You’re lying. What did that bastard do to you?” _Anger. Anger was comfortable.  It was understandable._

“Can you come get me? I’m afraid I’m a bit unsteady.”  He gave the address. “Room 221, of course; Moriarty has an appalling sense of humor.” _I can’t take a cab like this._

“Have you called Mycroft?” _Mycroft.  This was all because of him.  Cold calculations started trying to reassert themselves, but kept falling apart._

“He’s next.” _When I see him, I have to find out what the truth is. I have to know._

He dialed Mycroft’s number. “Mycroft.” _His voice was tense, but it would be._

“Sherlock,” he said.  He gave the address and the room number mechanically.

“Are you alright?”

“Only if you haven’t done anything to Bond.” He heard his voice shake.

“I’ll be right there.”

Sherlock turned blindly toward the door.  After a few moments of standing and waiting he noticed a bit of stationary on the other table.  He staggered over to it, shivering whenever the silk boxers slid across his skin under the suit.

 

_“Mycroft my sweet,_

_Someday ask James about his philosophy on breaking valuable things. It’s why you still have a Sherlock to play with._

_Oh, and if you touch James, you won’t. I’ll see to it personally.  In fact, I’ll leave a shell for you to find; you know I can._

_With love, as always, Jim”_

 

After Sherlock finished shaking in terror and re-centering himself, he tried to look at it logically. _That letter only made sense if it was true. It can’t be true.  Therefore there must be a test._

He left the letter to see how Mycroft reacted to it.

Eventually John’s familiar knock sounded on the door.

 “I look fairly appalling, I’m afraid,” Sherlock said, hiding behind the door as he let him in.

John fell into the room and then turned to face Sherlock. He stopped and openly STARED at him. Sherlock felt like throwing up as John looked at him, stared at his hands as they twisted and shook, traced up the line of his shirt to his throat. He could still feel the horrible slick sensation of people touching him.

 “You… You look incredible!” John stared at him. “Appalling? You… you look like a model who spent a week at the spa!”

John was looking admiring at him. “It’s awful.” He muttered, “I tried to go out, people stared at me.”

“Sherlock?” Mycroft’s voice came from the door. Sherlock looked up and he could tell Mycroft knew. He knew he’d done something to upset Moriarty. 

 “This is entirely your fault!” Sherlock snarled.

Mycroft got very still. He tried to put up the walls that made him so hard to read, but for once Sherlock was willing to rip right through them. Mycroft could see him shivering and flinching.

 “No, he didn’t.”  _Rape you, break you._

“No, he didn’t.” _Yes, he did, or he may as well have, and he very nearly did._ “But he could have.”

“I don’t understand.” John looked back and forth, “Look, can you PLEASE take it down to ‘fairly intelligent but not a bloody Holmes’ levels?”

Sherlock looked at John and he knew he would never understand. He would try, but he wouldn’t understand. Sherlock stayed with the basics. “Moriarty apparently dealt with my brother a great deal more than we ever knew.  He didn’t let me know many details, but enough to know that at least his initial interest in me was because of Mycroft.”

Sherlock watched Mycroft carefully. _Yes, it was true.  It was much, much more than he had just said._

“And?” _John was thinking about rape_.

“He didn’t rape me or damage me, although he made it rather clear that he could have.” Sherlock shuddered ‑ _It would have been easier, it would have been better.  He could delete that‑_ and then glared at Mycroft. “He left a message for you.”

“I’m sorry. I never meant for you to be involved in my business, you know that.”

 _It wasn’t BUSINESS was it, Mycroft_? Sherlock all but screamed at him with his eyes.  He waved him at the message. “I’ve read it already.” _I know._

Mycroft read it, and Sherlock could see every single word hit. _It was true, then._

He picked it up, and brought it close to his face, and from the tilt of his head he knew Mycroft smelled the faint traces of Moriarty’s cologne.

 _They’d been lovers, or something like lovers._   Sherlock’s mind palace image of Mycroft collapsed slowly into shards and fragments. _Had Moriarty forced himself on Mycroft? Had Mycroft forced himself on him? Had they been in... love?_   Sherlock didn’t know; he didn’t care.

 Mycroft crushed the paper in his hand, but then moved to put it in his pocket. _Fury, jealousy, regret._

“Go home, Sherlock. He won’t bother you.” _I’ll leave Bond alone._

Sherlock staggered and stuttered past Mycroft.  Mycroft’s eyes analyzing the damage done.  Sherlock wanting nothing more than to go home, and scrape his skin to ribbons, getting the slick touch of hands off of him.

He was almost incoherent by the time he got home. He tore the suit off, and almost strangled himself ripping the silk underwear off of his body. Shuddering, he finally had to take scissors to some of it. He cut himself; he didn’t care.

He scrubbed himself raw, shaking, until he finally collapsed in the corner of the shower, sobbing.

When he finally crawled out there was a box on his bed, it was wrapped in a chain with a combination lock.  It took him hours before he managed the nerve to go over and open it.  There was a pre-loaded syringe and a letter:

_“Sherlock,_

_First let me say this: I’m sorry.  I know you won’t believe me, but I am.  After all we’ve been through, I found you a worthy opponent, even if tragically maudlin and corrupted by morals, but I digress…_

_I have to agree with James, it’s a sad thing when something beautiful and valuable becomes worthless.  I would love to bend you until you were something dark, and sharp, and glitteringly dangerous‑maybe someday I can.  We could rule the world together, I think, dancing in the shadows.   I wouldn’t even mind killing you‑ because at least then I would own you forever‑ but I don’t want you to break._

_It’s a fairly heavy dose of my favorite hypnotic.  You’ll never get me out of your mind, Sherlock, but you should be able to lock the file away where you don’t have to look at it._

_Jim Moriarty_

 

Sherlock depressed the plunger and felt his mind softening as a slow syrupy haze swallowed him up.  He began putting every touch, every sensation, and every single thing about the hotel room, into a box that looked just like the one on the bed….

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was the expanded details of what happened in the final chapters of Smooth Criminal. Mycroft and Sherlock of course can read each other well enough that the italicized "thoughts" were clear, even if John Watson could not.

**Author's Note:**

> different people with sensory issues have different tolerances. what would be a sensual, wonderful experience for some people is torture for others, and consent makes a huge difference.
> 
> The title is from the song title by Fiona Apple "sleep to Dream"  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Wnh0V4HMM


End file.
